David & Layla

Do you want a change from Hollywood's formulaic films? Wait until you see this new independent film from New York. Last summer I saw it at a UCLA "cultural diversity" test preview with a large mixed Jewish Muslim American audience, including lots of us- regular or irregular Americans! This screening was organized by UCLA's Center for Near Eastern Studies, apparently sponsored by Jewish, Arab, Kurdish and Iranian foundations. The film turned out to be a clever, political, and thought provoking, mixed-genres 'Romantic Comedy', generating a few sad tears and lots of smiles and laughs! The audience loved the film.

Set in Manhattan and Brooklyn, it's a stimulating and believable love story, evidently inspired by a true Jewish Muslim romance: A sort of 'West Side Story' or 'Romeo & Juliet', sprinkled with religious issues & political dialogs re. contemporary Middle East. It finishes with an ambiguous, though altogether human, Happy Ending! The male lead David (DAVID MOSCOW) is charming and funny.

The best surprise is the female lead: the poetic, dancing Layla (SHIVE ROSE.) Her Layla is so lovely and graceful that even women fall in love with her, and her cause! Shiva, a Persian American actress, was in the audience with her Hollywood actor husband, Dylan McDermott, the TV star of THE PRACTICE. She joined the director for a lively Q & A afterward. Shiva said to bring the plight of divided Kurdistan – and the genocide/gassing of 5000 Kurds in Halabja by Saddam - to the world's attention was one of the reasons she was wanted to play Layla.

It's refreshing to see on film such a strong, intelligent and complex female lead as Layla from the Middle East/Islam world. Sadly, due to censorship, lately the films from Iran and the Middle East tend to be mostly about men and especially about sweet or tragic children. The instinctual feminine strength, and the natural shapes and graceful movements of women are covered by Fundamentalists' religious laws. Women are restricted to minor, one dimensional support, pretty & passive roles. Or at best, women are reduced to attractive faces with talking mouths- while their heads of long hair - the playful mysteries of which drove painters & poets to ecstasy - remain covered; while their feminine, fertile bodies are shrouded in uniform funeral black; and while their passionate hearts are caged by men's pious Laws!

Becoming more and more liberated, Layla speaks her mind, dances and drinks wine! Watch out for her incidental (or accidental?) breathtakingly beautiful Marylyn Monroe moment- a 360 degree dazzling night scene of Layla dancing at Times Square! That is enough, as anyone familiar with the Arab and the Islamic world would tell you, for their conservative or cowardly governments – fearful of fundamentalists' wrath – to ban this film from being distributed in any Arab and Islamic country. (Possible exceptions are Turkey and the newly "free" secular Kurdistan in northern Iraq.) Ironically, this film will be super popular in the Arab & Islamic societies, especially among their oppressed women and youth. Overtime, the film should build a huge cult following on underground DVD & cable and satellite TV broadcasting from the 'free' world to the Middle East and Islamic countries. (During the Q & A, a couple of Kurds, mistaking this fictional film for a documentary, complained that not all Kurds are Muslims!)

The great ensemble support cast of mixed American and ethnic character actors is directed convincingly. Scenes and dialogs in this fast-paced film are fresh: original scenes, bits of history and culture, relevant ideas and witty or scathing dialogs, and tough issues...you are unlikely to have seen or heard before. And the sex scenes are by turn: funny, wild, romantic or exciting!

Towards the end, look out for a colorful Kurdish & Jewish ethnic wedding, with an unexpected & daring symbolic exchange! From the opening sequence to the ending credits, the captivating music (Jewish Klezmer, Jazz, and Kurdish and Iranian music) touches the heart and tickles the funny bone.

I hear the film is being shown at festivals & universities, waiting to be picked up by a distributor for general release. As another IMDb User has commented, the film plays with fire: it will ruffle feathers among the industry and festival power players who are mostly used only to see one side of this story shown in a positive light; and who are used to Hollywood films where religious conversion happens only in one "politically correct" direction.

Anyway, can't the 'gate keepers' take, the (ironic) religious conversion in this film, not literally, but as a convenient sacrifice by lovers for the sake of love?

Let's hope a distributor will find that for the general American and international audiences, this Jewish Muslim meaningful Romantic Comedy could be the next "Bend It Like Beckham" or "My Big Fat Jewish Muslim Wedding", with spicy politics, and a strong message of peace, that will also attract those seeking a bit of intelligence with their entertainment!